Batters.
A crêpe batter and a fritter batter differ only in how much flour each gram of milk carries — and a little more flour makes a lot more thickness.
A dough holds together because its flour has absorbed all the water; a batter has more liquid than the flour can take up, so it flows. Its thickness depends on how crowded the swollen flour particles are, and like any suspension (X.1) it rises slowly at first, then steeply as the particles approach touching. Thin batters of about 30–45 g of flour per 100 g of liquid (milk, water and eggs) pour and spread: crêpes, Yorkshire pudding, the 煎饼 of 煎饼果子. Medium batters, 50–75 g, flow thickly: pancakes, tempura and beer batters that cling to what is dipped. Thick or drop batters, 80–120 g, mound on a spoon: fritters, muffins (XXV.2).
Batters want little gluten. Overmixed, they turn rubbery and pancakes tough. American pancakes are stirred only until the flour disappears, lumps left in; tempura batter is mixed with ice-cold water, barely stirred with chopsticks, used at once, sometimes with low-protein or rice flour — cold slows gluten and keeps the batter thin, so the coating fries lacy and crisp (XV.9). Crêpe and Yorkshire pudding batters, by contrast, are best rested 30 minutes to an hour: the flour hydrates fully, the bubbles from whisking rise out, and the gluten that formed relaxes, so they spread thin and evenly. The workshop thickens a batter.
Below: the relative thickness of a batter with the flour you choose per 100 g of liquid (Krieger–Dougherty suspension law, with flour swollen to 1.5 times its dry volume — a teaching assumption), on a logarithmic scale, with the kind of batter it makes.
- Explain why batters pour and doughs do not.
- Choose a flour ratio for each batter.
- Mix tempura and pancake batters without toughening them.
- Know which batters to rest.
Count the flour, spare the whisk
In this teaching model a crêpe batter of 36 g flour per 100 g liquid is about 2.6 times as thick as the milk, a pancake or tempura batter of 60 g about 5.5 — some 2.1 times thicker for less than twice the flour — and a fritter batter of 100 g about 34. The steep rise is why a spoonful more or less of flour changes a batter so much, and why a batter that has stood thickens: the flour goes on absorbing water.
Crêpes (12): whisk 125 g flour, 2 eggs, 300 mL milk, a pinch of salt and 25 g melted butter smooth; rest an hour; cook thin in a hot buttered pan, about a minute a side. Pancakes (8): stir 190 g flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tbsp sugar and a pinch of salt into 240 mL milk, 1 egg and 30 g melted butter, just until no dry flour shows; cook at once on a medium griddle, turning when bubbles stay open. Tempura: 100 g low-protein flour into 1 egg plus ice water to make 200 mL, stirred a few strokes with chopsticks, lumps left; dip and fry at 170–180 °C (XV.9), keeping the bowl on ice.
Make a crêpe batter and divide it: cook one crêpe at once and another after an hour's rest. Compare how thin and even they spread.
Terms
- Batter
- Flour in more liquid than it can absorb; it pours.
- Drop batter
- A thick batter that mounds on a spoon.
- Resting
- Letting a batter stand to hydrate, de-bubble and relax.
- Tempura batter
- Ice-cold, barely mixed, used at once.
Sources
- A teaching value chosen for the course: the right order of magnitude and shape, not a measurement of a particular food.
- H. McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, 2nd ed., Scribner, 2004.